She nodded. "And nearly the end of my strength too. I was afraid that, if I took a place anywhere, my health would give way. I was afraid--a coward!" Suddenly her own emotion gave her words and steadied her voice. "I ought to have gone on--just died, and trusted God to care for them! But, oh, you have never known--never thought of what it means--to have the ones you love, your own, your darlings--destitute, and to know that you--can't go on much longer.... As for you"--she looked him squarely in the eyes, her own full of scorn--"how could I have guessed that a man like you could be? A man who could find pleasure in bullying, browbeating the helpless girl he had sworn to love?" "Ha!" he said, "so you break out at last, do you? How dare you speak to me like that? I shall punish you for it. You haven't read that letter yet. Give it me." She held Pansy's as yet unread epistle crushed in her left hand. Without reflecting, she snatched it to her breast, covering it with her other hand. In a whirlwind of some blind fury which he could not analyse he took it from her, using force to unclasp her fingers. There was a tussle--momentary only--then she stood free of him in the middle of the room, a wild look on her face, glancing this way and that as if for escape. He stood before the one door, the other was locked. Like a flame blown out by a puff of wind her passion died as the knowledge of her own desperate case overflooded her. Turning away with a long-drawn moan she crouched down in a big chair, hiding her face, giving way to her despair unrestrained. In a minute or two she heard his voice, harsh and broken, speaking close to her. "Why did you provoke me? You shouldn't; it's dangerous," he growled hurriedly. "Here, take your letter; here it is"--pushing it into her hands. "Stop crying, can you? or conceal your face. Here comes Hemming with the tea." At the admonition she sprang to her feet, and he saw the pathos of her pale, tear-washed cheeks. With a swift movement she ran to the writing-table, seated herself thereat, and bent down her face as if busily occupied. Gaunt placed himself beside her, leaning partly over, as if watching what she wrote; and upon the domestic tableau the servant entered with his tray. CHAPTER XIII THE TREATMENT BREAKS DOWN "_Oh, do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate, When I remember thou wast one._"--Donne. The otter hounds were out, and Mr. Ferris was driving his wife in the car to the meet. The gentleman was in capital humour, for he knew how acceptable a companion he would prove to everybody this morning; being, so far as he knew, the only person who had yet actually beheld the romantic creature who had conquered that hard and woman-hating bachelor, Gaunt of Omberleigh.